Kiss 'N Tell

by Kathi Daley

  After I checked my emails and messages, I ate a sandwich and then set out with the dogs for a long relaxing walk. I decided I didn’t really have the energy for a run, but a nice leisurely walk along the beach sounded just about perfect. While I was on my way back to my cottage, a text came through from Adam. He said he was on his way home and wondered if I wanted to meet with him this evening. I texted back to let him know I would love to meet with him. He provided a time and suggested that given the fact that he had dozens of guest rooms, maybe the dogs and I should just plan to spend the night at his place. He indicated that our talk might go long, and he didn’t want me making the long drive home after dark. Of course, I could have pointed out that I’d been driving in the dark for years, and it shouldn’t be a problem to do so this evening, but spending a relaxing evening with Adam and not having to worry about the time sounded really nice, so I texted back and let him know that sounded like a good plan.

  I texted Jemma and Parker and let them know what I was doing should either need me for anything. I was curious what would happen once Deputy Todd finished interrogating everyone that he’d scooped up in the raid last night, so I asked Parker to call me if she had any news. Once that was done, I packed a bag, loaded up the dogs, and headed toward the house on Piney Point, where I hoped I might finally find some of the answers that had been nagging at me since Adam and I had last spoken.

  Chapter 15

  Adam had called ahead and had asked his housekeeper, Ruth, to prepare a meal that would be served in his suite. By the time I arrived, the meal was ready, and the mood set. Adam’s suite was really more of a home within a home. The seating area alone was actually as large as the entire downstairs of my cottage.

  “So, how was your trip?” I asked politely, wanting to get to the point but deciding to allow Adam to set the pace.

  “It was lovely. It’s been ages since I’ve visited Italy. It was nice to spend some time there.”

  “And Warren?” I asked, deciding that waiting really wasn’t going to work for me. “Were you able to meet with him?”

  Adam smiled. “I was.”

  “And?”

  “And I found Warren and his wife, Giovanna, to be lovely people who I’m looking forward to getting to know better.”

  I set the fork I’d been stabbing at my food with down on my plate. “So, were you able to ask Warren about Avery and me? Were you able to ask him about my parents and his role in their deaths?”

  “Well, not directly,” Adam said.

  “So, what did happen?” I was becoming more and more impatient.

  “When I arrived in Italy, I introduced myself and filled him in on my connection to the family in England. I told him that I was in the area on business and decided that it was about time that I introduced myself to family members who might be many times removed, but who I was curious about. Warren knew who I was and was happy that I’d stopped by. He invited me to have dinner with the family. His wife and children are lovely. I think you’re really going to enjoy getting to know them.”

  “So he didn’t kill my parents?”

  Adam shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. As I assured you I would, I kept you out of our discussion. At no point did I mention Ava, Avery, or Marilee, and he didn’t bring any of you up. I simply told him a bit about the foundation I run with Archie, and he told me about the foundation he runs with Giovanna. It was a very casual conversation, but it did allow me to get an impression of the man. His wife and children seemed to adore him, and he was very friendly with the household staff. He took the time to compliment them and even to introduce them to me. It seemed as if he treated them a lot like family.

  “It does sound like he is a nice man.”

  “He really seems to be. I went into the village the next day and spoke to some of the folks he’d mentioned during our conversation the previous evening. It seemed obvious he was popular and well-loved by all. It seemed that he was generous with both his time and his money. At no point did I get the impression that he was some evil man who would set out to kill two little girls.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “I did my own research and ended up with the same conclusion.”

  “While I was in Italy,” Adam continued, “I used some of my connections and was able to get a look at the accident report that was prepared after the crash that killed your parents, and tampering was never mentioned. I know that Olivia told me that Marilee told her that she suspected tampering occurred, but I couldn’t find any proof of that. Additionally, I spoke to a man who used to work as legal counsel for your parents and has his own law firm now. He told me that Warren had brought the evidence he’d collected relating to the birth order between his grandmother and Leopold to Arthur before his death, and Arthur had agreed that Nicolas might have fixed things to have a male heir. He was under the impression that the men had agreed to work out a distribution of assets that would benefit both men. I promised not to bring your name into my discussion with anyone in Italy, so I couldn’t ask him how things would have worked out if you hadn’t gone missing, but it is a conversation we can have with the man at some point in the future.”

  “Do you know if Warren looked for Avery and me after Marilee took us away?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t get that far. I think that at some point, a conversation between you and Warren will be warranted.”

  I took a deep breath and let everything sink in. “So you don’t think I’m in danger? You don’t think Warren has been looking for me all these years intent on killing me?”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t.”

  “Then who sent the text to me this past November reminding me that Ava was dead and it was best to keep her that way?”

  “I don’t know,” Adam admitted. “But unless I’m totally wrong about Warren, and while I don’t think I am, it is true that we only spent a short amount of time together, I really don’t think it was him who sent you the text.”

  I closed my eyes and hung my head suddenly exhausted.

  Adam got up and took my hand. I’d barely eaten any of the food Ruth had prepared, but I found that I had no appetite. He pulled me to my feet and led me to the sofa. After he’d settled me on one end and wrapped a thick blanket around me, he sat down next to me and pulled me into his arms. I let the comfort of his embrace calm my troubled thoughts as I tried to find the truth within all the lies, but the more I thought about it, the more confused I became. Closing my eyes, I allowed Adam to adjust our position so that my head was resting on his chest. The sound of his heartbeat beneath my ear provided the calming tone I needed, and I found myself relaxing for the first time since I’d arrived here.

  “I missed you,” I said.

  “I missed you, as well.” He kissed the top of my head.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I whispered. “I don’t know what to think or what to feel.”

  “I know.” He tightened his arms around me. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions, but I want you to know that you don’t have to do this alone. I’m here for you. Until the end. We’ll make a plan, and once we have that plan, we’ll work together to find your answers.”

  I smiled. “It might take a while to figure this all out.”

  He ran a hand over my hair. “I have a while. In fact, I have as long as you need.”

  Chapter 16

  It had been a week since the men and women arrested exiting the illegal poker game had been processed. Most of them had been released, but a few would be prosecuted, including the bartender, whose name I found out was Skip; the game organizer, Stewy; and the thug who’d grabbed Jemma and me, who I now knew was named Cliff. Stewy, who was trying to save his own hide, admitted that he’d been the one who realized Kyle had been cheating and that he had asked Cliff to escort the man out but was adamant that he hadn’t told Cliff to kill him.

  Cliff confessed to escorting Kyle out and even hitting him hard enough to knock him out, but he still maintained that Kyle was very much alive when he settl
ed him into his car.

  Skip was trying to convince everyone that he was an innocent bystander who knew about the game but hadn’t been part of any actions involving Kyle. I supposed it would be up to the courts to sort that out.

  It wasn’t until the dust had settled that it occurred to me that if Cliff was telling the truth, and he’d knocked Kyle out and then put him in his car but hadn’t killed him or transported him to the vacant house, then this wasn’t the end of it.

  I knew that Kyle’s car was still in the lot behind the bar when it was found, so he hadn’t driven anywhere. I also knew that, according to the phone records Jemma had pulled, the last call Kyle had made was to the bar, so he hadn’t called anyone to help him or pick him up should he have regained consciousness after Cliff hit him. Perhaps, I reasoned, someone had been inside the bar or at the poker game that night who’d followed Cliff out when he removed Kyle from the game. Maybe this someone had a beef with Kyle, so they’d taken his unconscious body from the car and transported him to the house where he was stabbed and left for dead.

  But who? And why?

  I thought about the house where Lizzy found the body. The cat and the body had been inside, but nothing appeared to have been disturbed. Of course, I hadn’t really looked around. Lizzy had screamed, I’d seen the body, and I’d gotten us both out of there.

  While I hadn’t taken the time to look around, Deputy Todd and his men had searched the house. I wondered if they’d found anything that might indicate who might have left Kyle lying on the floor in the middle of the living room. I supposed I could ask Parker if she had information she hadn’t shared. I doubted my asking Deputy Todd would get me anywhere.

  Making a decision I picked up my cell. “Hey, Parker, it’s Ainsley. I wanted to talk to you about the murder case.”

  “Are you still bothered that there are so many loose ends?” She asked.

  “Yeah, sort of,” I answered.

  “Me too. Are you at home or in the office?”

  “In the office.”

  “I’m just down the street. I’ll come to you, and we can talk.”

  I put on a pot of coffee and poured two mugs. When Parker arrived, we settled in and then went through everything again. We both agreed that while we seemed to have part of the story there was still a huge hole in the ending. A hole we both wanted an answer to. We kicked several theories around but eventually settled on the idea that it really did have to have been someone from the poker game who’d moved and stabbed Kyle. But who?

  “I know when you called the rental agent for the vacant house where the body was found, she told you that no one had rented it that week, but what about the week before?” I asked. “Can we find out who was occupying the house the week ending the Sunday before Lizzy found the body on Wednesday?”

  “Yeah. I’ll call Heidi.”

  Once Parker connected with Heidi and had asked her question, I noticed a look of shock cross her face.

  “Okay,” she said. “Thanks for the information.”

  She looked at me. “The person who rented the house the week before Kyle’s body was found inside was Lance Drysdale.”

  “Lance Drysdale? As in Kyle’s Lance?”

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  “But Lance would have been staying with Kevin and the others for that weekend. Why would he rent a house in addition to paying his share in the group rental?”

  “I don’t know. Unless Lance planned to kill Kyle all along.”

  “Why would Lance kill Kyle? And how did he even know where Kyle was on the night of the murder?” I asked.

  Parker just shook her head while I desperately tried to remember if I knew anything that might explain this.

  “I do remember Kevin saying that Kyle and Lance both liked to gamble,” Parker pointed out. “He doubted Lance had been gambling with Kyle since Lance had been hanging out with Jimmy all week, but the men did separate after Kyle left the bar with Kia, so it’s possible they both ended up at the same poker game.”

  “And we know that Lance had been picking on Kyle all week. Maybe there was more behind the harassment than just friendly competition,” I added. “Perhaps Lance was angry with Kyle for something else and was only using the game as an excuse to hassle him.” I paused to think about it. “Maybe when Kyle showed up at the game, he did something to set Lance off, and after Kyle was dumped in his car, Lance took him to the house he still had a key for, stabbed him and left him there.”

  “Okay,” Parker said. “That’s a good theory. How do we prove it?”

  “We need to talk to Kevin.”

  A conversation with Kevin netted us the information that Kyle and Lance did indeed have a rocky past. Kevin confirmed that he hadn’t been aware that Lance had been in town the week before the group getting together, but he did admit that it had been Lance who had been pushing for the group to get together that particular week rather than waiting until it was warmer. Most of the others in the group were rooting for June.

  “Okay, so Lance arranges for this little get together, but he comes to town a week before everyone else and rents a house. Why?” I asked.

  “He needed to do something. Maybe he needed to put something in play,” Parker suggested.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “What if Kyle being at the poker game on the night before the group met up wasn’t a coincidence?” Parker suggested. “What if Lance had invited him? Maybe they wanted to keep it between themselves for some reason, so they hadn’t mentioned that they’d been in town before the others were set to meet up at the rental on the bay.”

  “Okay,” I said, letting the idea roll around a bit. “So Lance is in town on his own for a few days for a reason we currently don’t know. He finds the poker game and suggests to Kyle that he come early, so they can both make some money. We know that Kyle came away with a lot of money so if he did cheat, maybe he cheated Lance as well. Maybe Lance knew Kyle cheated and was angry, so he comes up with the idea for the Casanova Challenge, knowing that hooking up with random women will be so far out of Kyle’s comfort zone that he’ll be miserable.”

  “Yeah,” Parker said, looking doubtful. “The idea that Lance killed Kyle because of a poker game seems like a stretch. There has to be something more to it.”

  “I’m not sure we can figure this out on our own,” I finally said. “Especially since Lance, Jimmy, and Cory have gone back to Seattle. We may need to call in the big guns.”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s time,” Parker admitted.

  It took a call from Parker to Deputy Todd, and then a call from Deputy Todd to Seattle P.D., and then an intense interview from Seattle P.D. to get to the truth, but eventually we found out that Kyle had dated a woman Lance had been good friends with and even had feelings for the previous summer. It seemed that even though this woman was totally in love with Kyle, Kyle had cheated on her, which led to her getting drunk and then fleeing from a party they’d both attended. She died in a vehicle accident that night. Apparently, Kyle had professed his regret at what had occurred, and Lance had pretended to forgive him, but as it turned out, he’d been planning this little sting for months.

  “So you’re saying that Lance convinced Kyle to come to Gooseberry Bay and cheat Stewy out of a lot of money figuring that Stewy wouldn’t take kindly to being duped and would take care of Kyle for cheating, allowing Lance to get his revenge for the death of his friend without getting his hands dirty,” Jemma said later that afternoon.

  “Yes,” Parker confirmed.

  “And when Kyle got away with the money the first time, Lance was enraged,” Josie added.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Parker said. “I know the plan seems to have a lot of flaws but unless Lance is still lying, and I don’t know why he’d lie about this, that seems to be what occurred.”

  “So Lance actually confessed?” Josie clarified.

  “After he’d been interrogated for several hours,” Parker confirmed.

  “I guess the
coroner was wrong after all about the cause of death not being the stab wounds,” I said.

  “Yeah, that does appear to be the case,” Parker agreed.

  “I feel like I’m still missing part of this,’ Jemma said. “What actually happened to the wallet? Was that part of the plan?”

  “It was,” Parker confirmed. “On the night Kyle was murdered, Lance had paid a guy to lift Kyle’s wallet. Then he’d convinced Kyle to go back to the poker game with him to win back the money he’d lost, so they’d both have money to party the rest of the week. This time, however, Lance had warned Stewy that Kyle was a cheater and even demonstrated how Kyle cheated. Stewy was ready for him, so when Kyle made his move, he told Cliff to take him out and make an example out of him.”

  “So did Lance plan to take Kyle to the vacant house and kill him all along?” Josie asked.

  “No,” I answered. “Lance figured that a big guy like Cliff would take care of Kyle once and for all, but when Lance found Kyle unconscious but alive, he decided to take matters into his own hands. Parker and I both agreed that Lance taking Kyle to the house he’d been renting was dumb, but given everything that had gone on, it did appear that Lance wasn’t the brightest guy in the group.

  “And Kevin had no idea any of this was going on?” Josie asked. “He never suspected anything even after Kyle was found dead?”

  I shook my head. “Kevin said that he knew that Lance and Kyle went to the same college, and he knew they traveled in the same social circle. He even knew that a woman Kyle had been dating had died in an accident the previous summer. What he didn’t know was that she’d died as a result of getting blind stinking drunk before driving away from a party after learning that Kyle had been cheating on her or that Lance had been half in love with the woman for years.”